Today’s Blue Posts on Artisans

With finally something new to talk about, Bashiok has leapt into the forum chat today with additional info and clarifications.

A fan asked about what the salvaging system might do to trading; if everyone’s breaking down every item they’re not going to use themselves, what will be left to trade? Bashiok offers his opinion:

I think there are too many unanswered questions about the trading game to really know how it will be affected by salvaging.

You’re right though, as people get higher and higher level, the bar they set for items they feel are worth trading will raise. But that’s a natural inflation associated with character level. It isn’t an effect of salvaging, simply a product of relevance as items lose their usefulness to higher level characters (and thus relative worth). Is salvaging worse than simply passing over an item? Unlikely, but it depends on how the salvaged commodity works its way back into the economy, and I don’t think I can speak intelligently about that.

It’s never truly a real problem as the game is still able to be played and enjoyed and finished without ever trading with another character, but a true inflation where low level items are being sold at prices only high level characters can afford, I think would still take years.

Another fan asked about crafting recipes:

As far as Crafting Recipes are concerned, are they going to be in Scroll form and can they be traded to other players?It hasn’t been fully nailed down yet, but probably.Will higher quality items have a higher chance of better crafting materials upon destruction?

Yes, and potentially even ‘A’ chance.

The longest discussion concerned the “Horadric trash compactor” and what effects the salvaging and crafting engine will have on gameplay. The OP, by Grug, worries about the effect of salvaging. Will players pick up absolutely everything just to transmute it into reagents? Will that devalue items, since we’ll just look at them all as ingredients for some future crafting recipe?

Maybe I’m missing the concern, but you seem to be pointing out that the player will now have interesting choices on how to deal with the items they find. Either vendoring them, salvaging them, or trading. This is a good thing.

Personally I think if it means that people have a reason to pick stuff up and not leave a trail of lower quality items littering their games… that seems like a win.

It’s not really a choice, though. Items now show how much they sell for in their descriptions. Fill up your inventory with loot. Once you find a new thing, salvage the least valuable and repeat. Thus you return to town with the maximum amount of gold and salvage.

But will the least valuable break down to the components you need?

Bashiok answered so many questions in this one that I had to put the rest of them (7 9 more!) below the fold. Click through for the full conversation.

Doesn’t matter if it’s what you need or not. I doubt carrying 30 items is better than carrying 29 items plus 60 items worth of Salvage. You can always break down important items for rare resources later. Worthless and common stuff is free to be hoarded.To a point.

Can you try formulating your concern again for me? I’m still not quite understanding the actual problem, and I want to be able to get it answered for you.

Grug’s right. The issue here is that this is a mechanic that is apparently supposed to save time.No, no, no, it’s an optional way to create items for yourself as an addition to the drop game.

The problem is that this is a time saving mechanic that generates more work.Is it more work than doing runs and runs and runs hoping an item drops? Meanwhile you could be salvaging and working toward crafting an item of similar quality.

which you will need in future encounters.You don’t need to salvage anything if you don’t want to. It’s an optional way to craft items and fill out your set. Don’t care about crafting or want to spend time picking stuff up and salvaging it? Ignore it. You may have to kill more to get a piece you want, but that’s your choice.

Alright, well tell me this, are the best items in the game created only by crafting?Not exactly.

Our ideal end game character will sport a mix of rare and legendary items from drops, and crafted items.

Also keep in mind that to even be able to craft the best crafting items you’ll have to find the recipe first.

You simply have forgotten that Salvaging items doesn’t really consume any amount of time. We have shortcuts like CTRL + LeftClick to instantly pick up the item to the salvaging chest. You just double click to salvage and Pick ALL materials. It’s quick. And the inventory is huge so you can go a while before having to do any clean up.

Will this salvage system work from the very beginning? Will we start salvaging from level 1?No, but it’s introduced very early.

Okay I think I’ve got a better summary.You fill up you inventory, you recycle low-value items until you have a heap of scraps (the name for the least valuable and most common type of salvage). Soon you have a huge amount of scraps. If recipes require large amounts of scraps, then normal items become more valuable for scrap than for gold, and it becomes obligatory to turn all normal items into scraps. If recipes require lesser amounts of scraps, then the players will accumulate more scraps than they will need, causing them to either wind up with a surplus or just leave the normal items on the ground.

Ok, so your question is more about the variety and scale of what items can be broken down into. I got it. And I have no idea so I’m gonna ask Wyatt and Jay if they can answer.

Bashiok added two more replies a few hours later:

Jay’s response was “If its not worth picking up for gold, it is definitely not worth picking up for crafting.”

Essentially any player worth their salt is going to favor gold over crafting materials, simply because it’s required for so many other things that are important to a high level character. And essentially a lot of this comes down to tuning and making sure the relationship between all of the systems isn’t broken, and all we can say to that is we appreciate your passion for the game.

So how does it feel to be refuted by the boss man, Bashiok? Did he tread on your dream of picking up every item? That reply from you probably colored the proceeding conversation in a big way.

How did he refute me exactly?

I’m a completionist so I’m likely to pick up more than most, but still there’s a point where picking up items of a certain quality aren’t worth your time. Maybe it’s tuned so that it only happens when you’re the most decked out and richest player in the world, but it will happen.

Comments

oh my god this is plain gorgeous!!! I am so godamn pumped even more now! it’s also quite interesting to see that they’ve taken ideas from previous D2 mods that took advantage of the “alchemy” system they had implemented themselves, with the gazillions of cube recipes and countless types of items you could use to transmute into something else.

I am officially pleased for life to see D3 expand like this. it’s beautiful